The Collected Papers of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 4, page 55
And so it proved, but the examination of the corpse didn’t occur until the next day. That night at Simmons’ church, Holmes reached and gently took the Bible and its damning evidence while a mute Lydia Hellifield was led away by Sergeant Corby – who only had the vaguest sense of what had happened, but knew from his past associations with Holmes that an iron-clad case existed nonetheless.
Simmons was bereft. I accompanied him to his bleak little room in a squalid house in Tilley Street, and several members of his congregation followed, anxious to minister unto him following the terrible shock he’d just endured. I understand that afterwards he never returned to the church, not even once, and soon after departed England entirely. I have no knowledge of his whereabouts, and if he does continue to minister, it is in such a way that has attracted no attention.
Later that night I returned to Baker Street to find Holmes smoking his pipe by the fireplace, cheery flames seeming to deny both the events of the night and the cooling October weather. I informed him that Simmons was being cared for, but the poor fellow seemed shattered.
“We may never know how things turn out,” said Holmes. “We’ve intersected with these people for just a few hours – just enough to understand what happened tonight – but with no true knowledge of the overall picture.”
“Such as,” I added, “whether Simmons can really perform miracles.”
Holmes nodded. “Events made that question irrelevant. And Hellifield tried to force an answer before I’d even had a chance to conduct a true investigation – typical of such impatient men.”
“One might even be tempted to say that he accelerated his own death,” I said. “Hiring you likely gave him the idea to go ahead and confront Simmons at the church, demanding to be healed. It’s probable that his daughter had some inkling of what he intended to do, as you speculated, and decided to move forward with her own plan of killing him herself, and then framing the minister by putting the syringe into his Bible. But surely,” I continued, a thought popping into my head, “she could have simply hoped that her father’s death would be put down to a fit, with no autopsy performed. Why reveal the syringe at all by leaving it to be found in the Bible, which would be returned to Simmons. He would certainly discover it almost immediately, and more importantly, would know who had put it there, and what that implied.”
“I suspect that her motivations were complex, but perhaps she wanted Simmons to know what she had done for some reason. Possibly she wasn’t quite finished with him yet, and that tie, no reinforced with a secret between them, would be of some use. Or she could have intended Simmons to be murdered quite soon too, and wasn’t worried about what he did or did not know. She may have just wanted a place to hide the syringe that wasn’t on her person, and it was easiest to frame the minister by handing it over to him in the Bible as soon as possible. The ways of women,” he summarized, taking a draw on his pipe, “are inscrutable. How can one come to any conclusions when attempting to build on such quicksand?”
A month or so later, I happened to pass through Whitechapel and took an impulsive turn into Lincoln Street. In most directions were poverty and death, and the public house was still doing a rousing business. But I was happy to see that in some small way, the church was continuing its mission, despite its loss of both minister and easy funding, open as something of a soup kitchen and doss house for the neighborhood’s unfortunates. Remembering the gentle words of Pastor Simmons, wherever he might be, and even those of Thaddeus Hellifield when discussing the poor, I climbed the steps to see if they needed any help.
The Tea Merchant’s Dilemma
I came down to breakfast that morning, aware that the weather had turned cold overnight. The distance between my room upstairs, warmed by its own little fireplace, and the sitting room on the first floor seemed longer when traversing the chilly stairs. Holmes’s bedroom door leading from the sitting room was open, and I assumed, correctly as it turned out, that he had left early.
Just as I moved to ring for Mrs. Hudson, I heard the front door open and slam, and then my friend’s unmistakable voice calling to our landlady. Hoping that he was arranging for breakfast, I went ahead and signaled my presence as well.
In moments Holmes had joined me, two red spots from the cold upon his pale cheeks and a gleam in his eyes as he shed his Inverness and fore-and-aft cap. He hung them up and stepped to the fireplace, where the blaze had already been started, rubbing his hands briskly.
“Have you been out all night?” I asked.
“Not at all,” he said. “But a great deal of it. I popped awake with a flash of clarity at about four a.m., when I understood Reverend Mirehouse’s secret agenda.”
“Rather than the obvious one, I suppose.”
“Indeed. It has been commonly thought that he had mailed the stillborn infant to the Home Secretary in order to protest the proposed closure of a cemetery, but he had another agenda, related to a housemaid under his nominal care – a position of trust that was sorely abused. When I understood what we had been told the other day by the cryptic groom, I dressed and made my way to Somerset House, where I was able to verify a few familial connections.”
“You accomplished this in the middle of the night?”
“I have a connection who owed me a favor.”
I shook my head. The matter of “The Home Office Baby” had been in the newspapers for a few days, another of those nine days’ wonders that regularly filled the London press. “Will you notify the proper authorities?”
“I stopped on my way back to send a wire,” was Holmes’s reply. “Thus, our planned trip to Colsterworth later this morning is unnecessary – allowing us time to see Mr. Twickening after all.”
I nodded, recalling the short note that Holmes had received the day before, requesting his guidance. Seeing the train of my thoughts, Holmes smiled and said, “I sent a second wire to Mr. Twickening, arranging to keep this morning’s appointment.”
Conversation turned to other topics, such as how young Vryland, who had visited the previous day, was faring since our dramatic meeting during the Colchester earthquake six months earlier, and the curious matter of the Cudham Dagger which, it will be recalled, was found on the altar of the village church, covered in what appeared to be blood. That already sinister aspect was found to be much worse when Holmes determined, at the outset of the investigation, that it wasn’t blood at all.
With that grim conversation in progress, Mrs. Hudson brought our breakfast, and then the morning progressed. During that time, Holmes saw several of his “bread-and-butter” clients, as he liked to call them – individuals who made their steady way to Baker Street like supplicants upon a pilgrimage, trustingly laying their problems before my friend with faith that he would be able, by way of an incisive question or two applied with surgeon’s skill, to steer them in the direction of a solution. These cases, while not dramatic, made up a goodly portion of Holmes’s time in those early days, and were very much of the same sort that had occupied him when we first began sharing rooms. Only in later years did his practice – and the scope of his investigations – grow to the point that he was unable to advise clients from his armchair as he once did.
By the time the bell rang at eleven, I had returned to Baker Street, having been in and out several times throughout the morning on errands of my own. I was in the sitting room when we heard footsteps, and Holmes said softly, “Mrs. Hudson, and a man – our client, certainly. And someone else. A woman.”
This was confirmed when our landlady introduced us to Mr. James Twickening and his companion, Miss Jane Tate, a lovely young lady in her mid-twenties. As we made pleasantries, his hand stole toward hers and gave a slight squeeze. She smiled toward him, and then they separated and found seats in front of our fire. Twickening placed a cloth satchel by his feet.
“Miss Tate is my fiancée,” explained Twickening. “It was her idea that I consult you, and I thought that she should join us.” He looked back and forth between us. “She is a clerk in the shop, where we met.”
I did not raise an eyebrow, but I was a bit surprised. The Twickenings, while not royalty, had certainly risen over the last couple of centuries to be a highly respected family, based upon their holding of a Royal Warrant to sell tea. They were quite wealthy, and regularly mixed with the nation’s rich and powerful.
I was certain that neither myself nor Holmes, who cared nothing for society’s conventions, had given any acknowledgement by our expressions of the unusualness of Twickening’s marital plans, but the man, a solid and dependable looking fellow who must be around forty, added, “I knew from the moment that I met Jane – that is, Miss Tate – that she was unique, and that I would need her in my life for the rest of it, or I would regret it for all my days.” The young lady smiled again, and I could understand his affection for her. I indicated for Twickening to continue, as I knew that Holmes had no interest in these details if they had no bearing upon the case.
“Right,” said Twickening. “Well, as you know, our family have been tea merchants since the very early 1700’s, having been located in the same establishment in the Strand the entire time.”
I nodded, as I was quite familiar with the place. Just east of St. Mary-le-Strand, and across from the Royal Courts near the beginning of Fleet Street, the narrow shop, seemingly built as an afterthought in an alley between two greater buildings, was a Temple to Tea, and I had made a number of purchases there, both when I was in London receiving medical training, and then after my return from Afghanistan, always seeking new blends in the same way that a tobacco fiend looks for unusual combinations, hoping to hit on that exact and most-pleasing mixture.
“I had never thought to be involved in the family business,” continued Twickening. “Having no interest in a life of leisure like my older brother, I trained in the law. However, having found a position with a firm in the Temple, very close to the tea shop, I discovered that the day-to-day activities there, producing endless documents to be filed away in teetering stacks of the same, was nothing much different than factory work – albeit under much better circumstances, of course,” he hastened to add. “Then, when my uncle had a stroke nearly fifteen years ago, I was called back, so to speak, and I found myself running the family business.
“It was the best thing that could have happened to me. I found that I had a knack for it. And more recently, being there has allowed me to meet Jane, who came to work there last summer.” He again turned his eyes toward the young lady. She lowered her head with a small smile.
Holmes cleared his throat and frowned. “Your note said you wished to consult me regarding a possible criminal matter.”
“Ah, yes. Yes, indeed. I believe that Twickening’s is being involved in something terrible.”
“How so?”
“Last evening, I was in the shop, taking care of some paperwork. I’m often away, at our warehouses. You understand that the shop in the Strand is much too small to carry out the actual shipping and receiving, as well as preparation of the different teas in bulk after they arrive in England. It is used for public sales only, and I’m only able to visit there a few days each week.”
“Excuse me,” said Holmes. “I have been to your shop, and I’m aware of its Lilliputian size when compared with its neighbors. How many people regularly work on the premises?”
“Four, usually. A manager, old Mr. Bell, and three girls to serve the customers. Often, one of these will work at a separate counter, constantly preparing a fresh pot of tea in order to provide samples to the customers. Although the premises started simply as a tea room in the early 1700’s, it had been quite a while since hot tea was truly served there. Serving samples to the customers was one of my own innovations. I’ve found that it often leads to additional purchases, as people who try something new will then take some home.”
Holmes nodded and waved a hand for Twickening to continue. “Yesterday was the first chance I’d had to visit in nearly two weeks, as other matters have kept me at the warehouse. Since you know the building, you will realize that there is no first floor, but it does have a small basement, accessed from the back of the ground floor. Downstairs is some storage, as well as an area set aside as an office – a desk used by either the manager, Mr. Bell, or by me, when needed.
“Occasionally, correspondence for me arrives at the shop, and Mr. Bell sets it aside on one corner of the desk. Yesterday, I sat down and reached for the usual letters, only to find a box sitting on top of them.” He nodded toward the satchel beside him. “This box. It wasn’t addressed to me, but rather to my brother, Roger.”
“And his position with the firm?” asked Holmes.
“He has none,” said Twickening shortly. “He is my older brother, and should have taken over the business. However, he was involved in several matters in his early twenties that embarrassed the family a great deal, and there was a falling out. We have had no contact with him since – which makes it all the more puzzling as to why a package for him would be delivered to the shop.”
“What was in it?”
Twickening glanced at Miss Tate, as if to see if she were agreeable to him revealing it. She nodded, and Twickening turned back to us while reaching for the satchel. “I was hesitant to force Miss Tate to view this again – she observed it yesterday afternoon, just after I opened it, and as shocking as it was for me, it must have been much worse for a lady.”
“I am fine, James,” she said. Her voice was firm, and had hints of the East End in her pronunciation, something that she had apparently taken pains to improve. Hearing her speak, I could believe that, indeed, whatever was in the box would likely not shake her as much as it seemed to have done to Twickening.
He lifted the satchel and removed a cardboard box, about nine inches square. It was unsealed at the top, and I could see shredded wood fibers, apparently used as packing material, peeking from the opening.
“It is – ” said Twickening, but Holmes held up a finger and stopped him from speaking.
“I will see soon enough,” he explained. “Let me discover it as you did.”
Holmes reached for the box and then proceeded to examine it minutely. He lifted his lens from the small octagonal table beside his chair and held it this way and that, leaning forward, paying particular attention to the label. At one point, he brought the box closer to his face and sniffed. Knowing Holmes’s methods, and how he would spend a great deal of time examining the box before moving on to the object – I had once seen him spend an hour-and-a-quarter on an envelope from a blackmailed Duke before reading the letter inside – I was not surprised.
Finally looking up, Holmes asked, “Did you save the string?”
Twickening nodded and reached into the satchel, pulling out a tangle of still-knotted twine. I saw with satisfaction that it had been cut and not untied. I knew that Holmes preferred to see whole knots.
Setting the box on his lap, Holmes then turned the string this way and that. He held up the cut ends and said, “You might want to sharpen your penknife, Mr. Twickening.” Our client’s hand stole halfway toward his waistcoat before he smiled and dropped it back to the arm of the chair.
Holmes tossed the string onto his table. “Sometimes a knot is simply a knot,” he muttered. Then he took a pinch of the protruding fiber from the box and held it up. Apparently it, too, was just wood, for he dropped it onto the floor beside him, and then reached in to pull out whatever object the box contained, spilling more wood fiber onto his lap, the chair, and elsewhere. I leaned forward, eager to see what had moved Twickening to seek the detective’s help.
With a further cascade of packing material onto his lap and the surrounding floor, Holmes pulled out a skull. I was surprised, both at the unexpectedness, and also because it did not seem as serious as I had been led to believe. Then, I recalled that seeing such an object, after our own varied and adventurous backgrounds and experiences, would be no shock to either Holmes or me. But to a tea merchant, opening such a box in a dark basement with no idea of what he was about to find, would likely be quite shocking – especially when associated with a prodigal brother.
Twickening and Miss Tate were silent while Holmes turned the collection of fused bones this way and that, using his lens upon occasion. Then, without comment, he handed it across to me.
It was clearly old, and severely damaged. It was a discolored and dingy brown, ironically looking as if it had been steeping in tea. The mandible was missing entirely, as was the left zygomatic bone and arch. The supraorbital margin above the right eye was broken and gone. There were no teeth.
Most peculiar was the shape of the thing. It was clearly that of an adult, but it seemed rather small and elongated toward the back, with hints that resembled animal rather more than human, and the maxilla protruded forward somewhat more than was usual.
I withheld comment, and handed it back to Holmes, who had thankfully been picking up the wood fiber and stuffing it back into the box. He replaced the skull there as well, and set it on the floor beside him. “I take it that you are concerned that your brother is involved in something questionable.”
Twickening looked surprised. “I would think that it’s obvious, Mr. Holmes – something of an understatement, as a matter of fact. Why else would a skull be sent to the tea shop? We’ve had no contact with Roger for years, and then such a package addressed to him shows up from out of the blue.”
“What caused his exile from the family?”
“Gambling. Temper. Drunkenness. Living the life of a wastrel. A refusal to straighten out and assume his responsibilities. The same old story, I’m afraid.”
“Do you know where he lives now? Where he works?”
“I had heard that he is in London, although that’s really all that I know. We were very close once, but when I was chosen by the family to run the business instead of him, our paths diverged. Some terrible things were said, on both sides I’ll admit, and I haven’t seen him since.”
